Great teachers produce great students. Don't they? Young musicians seek out teachers -- celebrated ones whose former students have succeeded in winning competitions, playing concerts, getting management, making recordings. Of course elite teachers pick their students, and the picking is important. The ability to recognize exceptional potential is rather rare. A teacher's celebrity (as a performer or as a teacher) can itself be a tool. And … [Read more...]
Archives for 2009
Simple is difficult
The simplest things can be the most telling. A very small, simple bit of music reveals everything about a player's technique, sound -- dare I say, soul? Consider the two-note slur: a group of two notes, frequently a descending step, connected, bound, by a legato phrasing tie (slur). A very basic building block, frequently realized very poorly, even by celebrated, professional executants. Classical musicians often strongly desire to perform … [Read more...]
Concert Accident
New York The Stone, last summer After the performance, I notice one of the screws that holds my glasses together is missing. Glasses still hanging together. During the hour-long set, somehow, tiny screw worked loose, jumped, disappeared. Metropolitan Museum Leaving to go across town, I lock myself out of apartment. No time. Must proceed to Grace Rainey Rogers and play recital. Miller Theatre Coming home after playing, I leave my … [Read more...]
Lights up
So there we are in the theater. The lights coming up just a few seconds too soon and making clearly visible two black-clad dressers meant to be offstage before the light arrives. A little glitch in seamless perfection. And then what? Pretend it didn't happen? Hope no one saw them? Or, on the fly, damage the seamlessness even more and send the dressers out again later on in the show? Most big theater productions have trouble with that kind of … [Read more...]
Dress like a banker — Dress like a rockstar
At Juilliard, the Old Guard piano teachers came to school dressed like bankers -- ties, jackets, well-polished shoes. (Musicians -- those Bohemians! -- needed to show they were respectable.) For the last fifteen years or so, classical musicians, at least some, try to dress like rockstars. Jeans, shoes you can't polish. (To show that musicians are not necessarily part of a stuffy "Establishment"?) … [Read more...]
I don’t do Rachmaninoff
In preparation for one of our spring masterclasses, I received a memo from one masterclass-giver's management. Along with requests about using a smallish theater and making two pianos available on stage, there were stipulations about the music to be played in the masterclass by potential student performers: no music by Rachmaninoff, no music by Liszt. Certain pieces by J. S. Bach might be ok, with approval. Certain works by Schubert, Beethoven of … [Read more...]
We’re all composers now
I went to The Stone on Avenue C to hear a rather renowned new-music-scene musician. He's a friend of a friend of mine. Somehow we'd never met before. I'd never heard him before. In this show, he played his music. A lot of material from the laptop. Recorded sounds that were processed and manipulated. Some pieces made use of a MIDI controller/trumpet. Some interesting sounds. One piece was based, it seemed to me, on a famous recording by Vladimir … [Read more...]
Global Warming
American conservatories have been redesigned from without -- through an increasingly high level of applicants. In the United States, we have no national network of government-sanctioned schools of music. No national conservatory. Our high-level schools are schools to the world. And the students get better every year. Now, people play the piano so well, it can be hard to look for more. To some extent, almost every excellent college looks at … [Read more...]
Play Better
At Tanglewood, quite a long time ago, Louis Krasner told me a story. For many years, he was the concertmaster of the Syracuse Symphony. A benefit concert had been arranged. Leopold Stokowski was coming to conduct Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The orchestra members speculated -- how would Stokowski conduct the iconic opening measures? Slow, with big fermatas? In tempo, à la Toscanini? What would the Maestro do? According to Krasner, Stokowski … [Read more...]
Across a crowded room
The first of seven days of piano auditions began well enough. The first half dozen prospects were accomplished players. Things to quibble with, of course -- but jobs well done. After each student finishes playing and leaves the room, the jury has brief discussion, then each of us assigns a rating for the auditioner just heard. After six auditions, something else happened. A diminutive youngster was seated at the clavier -- and I heard the … [Read more...]
Bruce Brubaker’s Guide to Alliterative Artists
Last week, I had a meeting about a new project I'm planning with Meredith Monk. I guess that got me started... Alvar Aalto Béla Bartók Caleb Carr, Colin Carr, Carl Craig, Claude Chabrol Don DeLillo Edward Elgar Federico Fellini Gérard Grisey, George Gershwin, George Grosz, Glenn Gould Harry Houdini Ippolitov-Ivanov (cheating I know, but his other names were Mikhail Mikhailovich) Judith Jameson Karl Kraus Lowell Liebermann Meredith … [Read more...]
Flatline
For about ten hours in Bob Katz's studio in Florida, I listened with him. We were adjusting the final mastering of my new CD. I like the sound on our previous discs, but I hope that this is going to be better. A piano sound not as edgy as pop, and not as distant as some classical piano recordings. Apparently, during part of one of the recording sessions, there was a taxi radio or some other kind of transmitter outside. Traces of those signals … [Read more...]
Can we play too well?
It's been suggested (by Charles Rosen) that a pianist who plays difficult passages notated in Robert Schumann's piano music, to today's standard of accuracy, is not giving an "authentic" reading. No one in the early nineteenth century could have done it, so, the argument goes, "mistakes" would be part of "authenticity." (We might speculate on the impact the sounds made or make...) In Ghent, a year and a half ago at the Orpheus Institute, we … [Read more...]
Masterclass
"Masterclass" -- the term makes me queasy. We had masters and slaves! A French boss can still be referred to as "Maître," as he is in Denis Dercourt's sadistic, delightful film centering around the life of a pianist, La tourneuse de pages. There's pervasive overuse of "Maestro" in orchestra land ("Will Maestro be joining us?"). My aunt Charlene, in best 1960s style, addressed my childhood birthday cards to "Master Bruce Brubaker." At New … [Read more...]